


And Then

by fyrelily1984



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, literally every character on GoT is pissing me off right now, so this is the result
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 02:58:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11865234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fyrelily1984/pseuds/fyrelily1984
Summary: The new King of the Seven Kingdoms sends a raven to Winterfell where Gendry Waters has spent the war. He has an offer for him: the name Baratheon, the keep at Storm's End and the title of Warden of the Stormlands. Except Gendry doesn't want that, he doesn't want any of that...





	And Then

“But I’m a bastard,” Gendry whispered, as the raven who’d delivered the message in his hand squawked impatiently before flying off without a reward from his plate. He sat at the high table in the great hall of Winterfell, the remains of his breakfast growing cold, the hall empty around them. He’d returned from a hunting party late the night before and had risen far later than his wont and Sansa, as Lady Stark, kept him company as befit her role as hostess for the men still garrisoned in the North.

Bastard. The word had always repulsed Sansa, the word that hurt her mother for so many years, the word she flung at Ramsay to make him angry, but in recent days had come to mean something different. Jon was a bastard - or at least he was raised as one - and he had become the greatest hero Westeros had ever known and then there was the other bastard, a son of Robert Baratheon, the one that had stood beside her brother beyond the wall and then defended Winterfell and all of Westeros to the last, the man who had befriended Arya on the road when there’d been no one else to protect her.

“You’re a hero and a knight,” Sansa reassured him, as she stood from her seat taking the scroll from his hand and reading Jon’s messy scrawl granting Gentry legitimization and, if he wanted it, Storm’s End, the traditional seat of power in the Stormlands and the ancestral home of House Baratheon. “And Jon wants to reward your bravery in the war.”

The words were difficult to push past her lips. If Gendry were to accept, he would be leaving Winterfell, perhaps for good. He’d be leaving behind Arya and he would be leaving behind -

“I don’t want it,” he said, interrupting her thoughts, taking the scroll back and tossing it onto the table and standing so quickly Sansa had to take a step back from where she’d hovered over his shoulder.

“The King of the Seven Kingdoms is giving you a castle and naming you Warden of the Stormlands,” Sansa scoffed, looking up into his eyes. “You’re being ridiculous. You don’t refuse something like that.”

Gendry tilted his head in annoyance. “No, Jon is asking me to go sit in one of his castles and get old and fat like my father did. I don’t want that, I never have.”

Sansa’s brows knit together as he stopped speaking and ran a hand through his hair. She knew why he fought the war, they’d talked about it often enough in his time at Winterfell. He’d done what was right, the only thing a man with any honor could do in the face of humanity’s destruction. He was a bastard, but that didn’t preclude him from having more honor than many of those who’d been born to nobility. He’d kept them safe when the wights attacked, when they breached as far as the Godswood, when Sansa, Lyanna Mormont and the others who had little in the way of fighting prowess, had thrown glass bottles filled with flaming rags from the walls to aid in the fight and held them off until a screeching dragon, Jon on its back had flown overhead, ending the battle for another night.

It was Gendry who’d raced back from the field, Arya at his heels to check on them, to make sure none of the undead creatures had made their way into Winterfell’s halls. It was Gendry who’d knelt before her the first time they’d met and placed his sword at her feet before Arya laughed at him for being so formal - maybe the first time a true laugh had escaped from her sister since she’d returned - and dragged him off to training in the yard, his eyes darting back at her, crinkling at the corners as he smiled an apology. Gendry who sat outside her chamber door, his hammer across his lap, Ghost at his feet as the Night King’s forces advanced for the final time. Gendry who’d stood beside her at Jon’s coronation and then escorted them back home from King’s Landing. And Gendry, who was looking at her with the most peculiar expression on his face and standing so very close, closer than he’d ever stood before despite all the times she’d wished he would.

“So you have no wish to be Lord Gendry Baratheon,” she said, not quite able to help the way her tongue darted out to lick her lips and her skin tingling when his gaze followed its path. “Then what do you want?”

He swallowed roughly, his eyes flicking back up to hers. “I’d like, with your permission my lady, to remain at Winterfell. Arya - Lady Arya - is here as are you and I…well, I’d…”

Sansa smiled and her heart gave a soft thud at his stumbling speech. It was always the unambitious men than would worm their way into her heart. First Jon and now this bastard turned Knight turned, what exactly? She didn’t quite know, but she would most certainly like to find out.

“I’ll send Jon a raven,” Sansa said, stepping closer, wondering if he’d step back. He did not. “I’ll say I have need of you here and that he’ll have to find someone else to get old and fat while they weather the rains at Storm’s End.”

“Will you, my lady?” he asked, his brows lifting with the corners of his mouth, eyes twinkling at her.

“I will, Ser Gendry,” she said, using his name with a teasing formality, “unless you’d like to tell my brother, the King, exactly why you’re refusing his offer.”

Gendry grew serious at her words and suddenly he had her hand in his, a calloused thumb running over the soft skin of the back of her hand. “I’ll send the raven, Sansa. Jon should hear it from me, hear my intensions that is. I’ll send it immediately and then…”

“And then?” she asked, her voice as breathless as it had ever been, as caught up in the moment as her much younger, far stupider self was when another who carried the name Baratheon had spoken sweet words of love, but that cruel child was long dead and these words were not of what she’d mistaken for love so long ago, but of something else, a promise or something much deeper and far more lasting.

“And then,” he agreed, brushing her knuckles with his lips, warm and a little chapped from the chilling winds outside.

**Author's Note:**

> Sansa needs someone lovely, uncomplicated and loyal. Gendry needs someone lovely and perhaps a bit more brains than brawn. This crack ship is my new favorite thing.


End file.
